Professor Juergen A Richt

Professor Juergen A. Richt is a veterinary microbiologist specialising in infectious agents with emerging, zoonotic and transboundary potential, including diseases such as animal influenza, e.g. avian and swine flu; prion diseases such as BSE; Rift Valley Fever; African swine Fever; and SARS-CoV-2 among others. His group has developed preclinical models, DIVA-compatible vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostic tools for domestic and wild animals.

Dr. Richt holds a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) and PhD degree – a DVM degree from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, and a PhD degree in Virology, from Justus Liebig University in Germany, at the latter of which he has held the position of Associate Professor.

In addition to being an Extraordinary Lecturer in the Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases at the University of Pretoria, Dr. Juergen A. Richt is the Regents and University Distinguished Professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University. He is also the Director of the Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases (www.ceezad.edu) and the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (www.k-state.edu/cezid). Dr. Richt has held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, USA, and his career also includes an eight-year assignment as Lead Scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Disease Center in Ames, IA, USA.

Dr. Richt has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles in such journals as Nature Biotechnology, Science, Journal of Experimental Medicine, PNAS, Cell Host Microbe, and Journal of Virology, among others. He is chief editor for Virus Genes and on the editorial board of several journals including Advances in Virus Research, Emerging Microbes & Infections, and others.